Duke was silent a moment, just studying me. I studied back. His face was craggy and weathered, his skin was sun-darkened and crinkled with use. His eyes were sharp and alive again and boring straight into mine. I stared right back.
Abruptly, he said, "All right, you've got your lab."
"Uh-thank you!"
"Yeah, I'll see how you feel in a week. Where did you want to set up this zoo?"
"The new bath house."
Duke looked at me sharply. "Why?"
"It's obvious. It's the only building in camp that's suitable. It's got concrete walls and very high small windows. Nothing could escape. At least, not easily. Nobody's using it because the plumbing was never completed; we could bring in portable heaters and fix up the interior any way we need."
Duke nodded. "That's exactly where I would have chosen. But I would have chosen it for you because it's a good safe distance from the rest of the camp. You'll have to clear out the stuff that's already in there. Tell Larry what you'll need in the way of special equipment, or if you need anything built. He'll find some men to help you."
"Yes, sir-and thank you."
He lifted his hand the barest distance from the table, a wait-a-minute gesture. "Jim?"
"Sir?"
"This is no party. Make your results count. Those specimens were awfully expensive." When he looked at me, his eyes were shinier than I'd ever seen. He looked haunted.
"I know," I said. It was suddenly very hard to speak. "I-I'll try."
I left quickly.
FOURTEEN
AN HOUR after I started cleaning out the bathhouse, Ted showed up with a sour look on his face. I told him what I wanted to do and he pitched in, but without his usual repartee of puns, wisecracks and pontifical observations. Usually, Ted radiated a sense of self-importance, as if he were coming straight from some very important meeting. He always seemed to know what everyone else was involved in. But this morning he seemed chastened, as if he'd been caught with his ear to the keyhole.
After a while, Larry and Carl and Hank joined us and the work moved a lot faster. They didn't speak much either. There was a Shorty-shaped hole in all our lives now and it hurt too much to talk about it.
There was a lot of work to be done. It took us half the afternoon just to clear out the lumber and other supplies that had been stored in the concrete-brick bunker, and the rest of the day to make the place millipede-proof. There were vents to be covered with mesh and windows to be sealed, and we had to install doors too; the latter had to be wrapped with wire mesh, and we had to mount metal plates on the bottoms too, just in case.
The final touch was provided by Ted, a brightly painted sign which stated in no uncertain terms:
THE BENEDICT ARNOLD HOME FOR WAYWARD WORMS
TRESPASSERS WILL
BE EATEN!!
No bugs, lice, snakes, snails, toads, spiders, rats, roaches, lizards, trolls, orcs, ghouls, politicians, lifers, lawyers, New Christians, Revelationists,
or other unsavory forms
of life allowed.
Yes, this means you!
Visitors allowed only at feeding time.
Please count your fingers when leaving.
-Ted Jackson,
Jim McCarthy,
Proprietors.
The interior of the bath house was divided into two rooms. One had been intended as a shower room; the other would have been for changing clothes and drying off, a locker room without lockers. We decided to use the locker room for the millipedes and the shower room for the eggs-if we had to choose one or the other to put in a tile-lined room behind two solid doors, it had to be the eggs because of the potential danger they represented. An escaped millipede would be far less serious than an escaped Chtorran.
We installed two large work tables in each room, connected the electric lighting and heaters, built a special incubator for the eggs and a large metal and glass cage for the millipedes. Sergeant Kelly was happy-she had her mess hall back-and so were we; we had a lab.
By suppertime, we were seeing our first results. We determined that the millipedes were omnivorous to a degree that made all other omnivores look like fussy eaters. Primarily, they preferred roots, tubers, shoots, stems, flowers, grasses, leaves, bark, branches, blossoms, fruit, grain, nuts, berries, lichens, moss, ferns, fungi and assorted algae; they also liked insects, frogs, mice, bugs, lice, snakes, snails, toads, spiders, rats, roaches, lizards, squirrels, birds, rabbits, chickens and any other form of meat we put before them. If none of the above were available, they'd eat whatever was handy. That included raw sugar, peanut butter, old newsprint, leather shoes, rubber soles, wooden pencils, canned sardines, cardboard cartons, old socks, cellulose-based film and anything else even remotely organic in origin. They even ate the waste products of other organisms. They did not eat their own droppings, a viscous, oily-looking goo; that was one of the few exceptions.
After three days of this, Ted was beginning to look a little dazed. "I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything they won't eat." He was holding one end of a typewriter ribbon and watching the other end disappear down a millipede maw.
I said, "Their stomachs must be the chemical equivalent of a blast furnace; there doesn't seem to be anything they can't break down."
"All those teeth in the front end must have something to do with it," Ted pointed out.
"Sure," I agreed. "They cut the food into usable pieces, particles small enough to be dissolved-but in order to make use of that food, the stomach has to produce enzymes to break the complex molecules down into smaller, digestible ones. I'd like to know what kind of enzymes can handle such things as fingernail clippings, toothbrush bristles, canvas knapsacks and old videodisks. And I'd like to know what kind of stomach can produce such acids regularly without destroying itself in the process."
Ted looked at me, one eyebrow raised. "Are you going to dissect one and find out?"
I shook my head. "I tried it. They're almost impossible to kill. Chloroform hardly slows them down. All I wanted to do was put one to sleep for a while so I could examine it more closely and take some skin samples and scrapings-no such luck. He ate the cotton pad with the chloroform on it."
Ted leaned forward; he put his elbows on the table and his face into his hands. He peered into the millipede cage with a bored, almost weary expression. He was even too tired to joke. The best he could manage was sarcasm. He said, "I dunno. Maybe they're all hypoglycemic......"
I turned to look at him. "That's not bad. . . ."
"What is?"
"What you just said."
"Huh?"
"About the blood sugar. Maybe something keeps their blood sugar permanently low, so they're constantly hungry. We may make a scientist out of you yet."
He didn't look up; he just grunted, "Don't be insulting."
I didn't bother to respond. I was still considering his offhand suggestion. "Two questions. How? And why? What's the purpose? What's the survival advantage?"
"Um," he said, guessing. "It's fuel. For growth?"